Anyone moved house with a nearly 2 yo and lived to tell the tale?

[houseargh]

Moved house two weeks ago with 22mo DD. Poor thing - it's been a lot - new houes, new nursery, new bedroom (she was in with us before, in a one bed flat) and to top it all off, she caught hand foot and mouth a week after we moved and is still getting over it ('mouth ouchie' 😥).

Feel like we are in a perfect storm right now, of very unsettled toddler, full-time jobs that haven't let up, and neverending flatpack furniture assembly (moved from a furnished rental flat so we're pretty much starting from scratch). I've honestly never been so tired in my life - way worse than the first six months, when she was waking up five times a night but keeping us both alive was basically all I had to do.

I know this is all par for the course but the part that makes it hardest is DD and the impact on her sleep and general demeanour - gone from regularly sleeping through to often waking up 1-2x per night, sometimes taking a lot of comforting to resettle. And getting her down at naptime/bedtime has become an epic trial. She used to get herself to sleep very happily (though even pre-move we were going through a bit of a regression, which much toing and froing with cups of water and cuddles required). Now it's a half hour long festival of crying, requests for water, requests for cuddles, more cuddles, more water, take the cup away, bring the cup back etc etc. I could go on regarding clinginess, sudden VERY strong preference for me over DP, overtiredness etc etc but I'm pretty sure anyway that the answer is just to stick it out and in a few weeks she will be more settled.

But right now that feels like a distant dream, so I would dearly love to hear from anyone whose toddler did not take well to a move, how long it took them to settle and what that looked like. Need a spark of hope for my exhausted Friday afternoon!

We did this, and the moves when smoothly. However we didn’t also change sleeping arrangements at the same time. I think you may have over-loaded her by not only moving to another house, but also embarking on her sleeping in her own room at the same time. Both are challenging by themselves, but do do both at the same time could be quite distressing and why her sleep is so disruptive.

You could try letting her nap in your bed, and also start off the night in your bed (and you carry her to her bed when you come to bed) until she’s comfortable in the new house. Then start encouraging her to go to sleep in her new room.

I did when DS was 18 months, 2 years and 2.5 years. In all honesty, I put him in bed with me but that was easier because I was by myself. When I decided he needed to go in his cot, I set up a blow up mattress by his cot and would put him to bed holding his hand through the rails and then sneak out. And then eventually I stopped holding his hand. Then I moved to the door. And then I moved outside the door. I told him I would stay there as long as it took to fall asleep, but he knew I was still there. It wasn’t a quick fix sadly but did work.

@Discovereads to clarify - she was never in our bed, she was in a cot in our room, and definitely don't want to suddenly put her in our bed for the first time in case she takes a shine to it and won't leave! But yes, I agree, it was probably a mistake to go straight to own room. The initial plan was to have her overnight in a travel cot in our room, nap in her own room and then move overnights to her own room once she was settled. But we had MIL (who she loves) staying for the weekend of the move, who was in DD's room (with DD) on a blow-up mattress - that seemed to go fine, so rather than move her two nights in we decided to just go with the flow. In retrospect a mistake but I don't want to reverse course now. One of us could sleep in there with her on a blow-up but tbh, we were getting a fair bit of bedtime protestation before we moved so I suspect that wouldn't make a huge difference. My gut feeling is that the new nursery is at least as big of an issue (she really loved her old place) and not much we can do about that, sad as it made us to move her.

Yeah, I agree the horse has left the stable, so I’m at a loss to as to what you can do as you can’t set your room up with her cot like it was? I suppose just understanding it’s a lot for her to adapt to and having patience will go a long way as well. They do settle in though (eventually)

I’m not sure this is much to do with a house move and more to do with all the other stuff. I think you need to be a bit stricter with the bedtime routine rather than repeatedly going in to settle

We moved a few months back when my DS would also have been 22 months. He didn't have to change nursery as we moved within the same town, and as a result it was probably less extreme than you are describing but it definitely impacted on him. He was taking longer to settle for bed, waking more in the night (sometimes really distraught) and very clingy out and about. I think it also coincided with a huge explosion of new words which didn't help. Most of it settled over a month or so, but the settling to sleep has really only just started to get back to normal now several months later. I think we had got into some bad habits and we did have to be a bit firm for a while.

I think moving is really stressful for adults (ours certainly was!) and it's easy to underestimate how much they pick up on this which probably unsettles them more than the move itself. Could you plan a weekend where you both take her out one day each for as long as possible and the other really powers on with the unpacking /furniture building? I'm sure when you are feeling a bit more sorted you'll feel less stressed and she'll probably settle down a bit to.

You can’t change the nursery, but you can change some stuff, even if it feels like a backward step. If she’s happier sleeping in the travel cot in your room for a while, give that a try. It’s a lot of change in one go for anybody.
Also get her involved in choices about her room where you can, even if it’s just where to put a picture on the wall etc.